‘Warrant signed by Nirmala Sitharaman’: Senior citizen duped of Rs 99 lakh life savings in digital arrest fraud

On October 30, the complainant received a call from a man who identified himself as an officer from ‘Colaba office of Data Protection Agency’. The man claimed that the complainant’s Aadhar card had been misused to a phone number on which 20 fraud cases have been registered. He said that she will be connected on a call to a senior police officer who will explain the case to her.

A fraudster posing as police officer ‘George Mathew’ spoke to her on a video call. He told the complainant that she had been booked for money laundering and her bank accounts would soon be frozen. She was told that she may be sentenced to five years in prison, if she did not cooperate with the probe. At this point, she was sent a fake document which the fraudster claimed was an arrest warrant. This fake warrant had the signature of ‘Nirmala Sitharaman’ deceitfully invoking the name of the Union Finance Minister to manipulate the victim.

The fraudster posing as a police officer then told the victim that since she is a senior citizen, she will be placed under digital arrest and that her case will be treated as ‘priority investigation.’ She was told that since she was facing money laundering charges, she would have to send all her savings and deposits to ‘Reserve Bank of India’ accounts for verification and that the funds would be returned to her soon after the process was over.

The victim believed in these fake reasons. She transferred Rs 99 lakh from her account to mule accounts of Cyber fraudsters registered in Thane. She was even sent fraudulent documents including a ‘receipt from Enforcement Directorate.’ A while later, as the victim started calling back on the numbers to seek a refund of the money, she did not get any response. She soon realised that she had been cheated and approached the crime police station of Pune City. A probe was subsequently launched into the phone numbers and mule accounts used by the fraudsters.

Investigators said the name of the fictitious ‘Data Protection Agency’ — and even that of the actual Data Protection Board of India (DPBI) — has increasingly been misused in multiple scams in recent months. Fraudsters typically invoke the names of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the state police, or central investigation agencies like CBI or ED, which have been exploited in thousands of similar cases.

Cyber investigators have repeatedly flagged concern that despite extensive awareness campaigns and sensitisation efforts by the government agencies, incidents of digital arrest, online extortion and blackmail continue to get reported. As previously reported by Express, these scams are orchestrated by complex, multilayered syndicates operating across borders. Victims’ money is often funnelled into mule accounts and then routed to international cybercrime networks using cryptocurrency transfers.